19 December 2007

Malacologica Bohemoslovaca, published by the Institute of Zoology at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, is a free-access online journal. So far as I can tell, there is no print version of it. Is that a good thing?

Although I have recently published papers in print-only journals (Schriften zur Malakozoologie and the Journal of Conchology) and then ended up putting pdf versions of my papers on my own web page, I would rather publish in journals that are both online and printed at the same time. In the future, however, everything will probably be online only. So, we might as well start getting used to it.

In any case, Malacologica Bohemoslovaca has been publishing some interesting short papers, including one about a record of the North American native land snail Zonitoides arboreus (vol. 6) from the Czech Republic, another on a sinistral population of the freshwater snail Lymnaea stagnalis (vol. 6) and another concerning the European slug Arion alpinus (vol. 5). Check them out when you get a chance.

So far as I can tell, there is no print version of it. Is that a good thing?

Are there permanent copies deposited anywhere? For instance, the online scorpion journal Euscorpius also distributes CDs to some institution libraries. If there is a permanent deposition, then all is well. If there isn't, then I'd say that is very bad. Unfortunately, we still can't guarantee the continued availability of online material (have you ever tried downloading supplementary material for Nature or Science articles a couple of years after publication?)

Its especially bad if they publish species descriptions. The ICZN code specifically states they have to be on printed media. Zootaxa gets around this by deposited paper copies in a few museums I believe.